This is as apt a CD title as any marketing department could have wished to come up with.

It’s Black Dyke in totally relaxed mood performing the type of easy listening shop window repertoire that isn’t demanding at all to play but is designed to ratchet up the Obrasso shop tills to work overtime.

Reminder

It’s also a reminder of what brass bands can do rather well - a selection box of Sunday afternoon bandstand concert pieces that can be enjoyed while sitting back in a deck chair licking an ice cream or supping a cool glass of Pimms.  

Black Dyke reels off the pieces with nonchalant ease - cruising through each without breaking sweat. The same goes for the listener, even when they do have to digest a rather big mouthful of musical cheese.  

That said, it’s all rather likeable, slick and fun - from the opening ‘The Screamer’ and ‘Tom and Jerry’ cartoon antics to ‘Brass Pearls of Switzerland’ and closing ‘Silbertraum’ via an amalgam of disparate stops in-between. 

Polished veneer

‘Dreaming Cornets’ proves how effortlessly a high-class front row cornet team can play a good tune, whilst even seemingly innocuous stuff like ‘Kalinka’, ‘The Anvil Crew’, ‘The Kings of Swing’ and the like are buffed up with a polished veneer:  ‘Seven Dwarves Swing’ is an absolute hoot. 

‘Just for Fun’ is totally undemanding - well…fun: Nothing more and nothing less.

If you want to hear some pieces that may well suit your band for those balmy outdoor concert days of Summer, or a family friendly event when the main purpose is put a smile on an audience’s face, then it ticks all the boxes those marketing people wanted it to do. 

Sophie Hart

Available from:

http://www.trevadamusic.co.uk/cds/cds/brass-bands-cd/black-dyke-just-for-fun

1. The Screamer (Jewell arr. Sandy Smith)
2. The Kings of Swing (Dan Price)
3. Carrickfergus (Trad arr. Dan Price)
4. The Anvil Crew (Trad arr. Alan Fernie)
5. Screaming Cornets (Marthaler arr. Walter trs. Sandy Smith)
6. Swing Flags, Swing (Walter arr. Sandy Smith)
7. Kalinka (Traditional arr. Ray Woodfield)
8. Bossasonata (Alan Fernie)
9. Tom and Jerry (Bradley arr. Christopher Wormald)
10. Swing Low (Trad arr. Alan Fernie)
11. Funk It Up! (Alan Fernie)
12. Seven Dwarves Swing (Alan Fernie)
13. Magh Seola (Gerard M. Fahy arr. Sandy Smith)
14. Mr. Bizet Swings (Sandy Smith)
15. The Old Chalet (Trad arr. Howard Lorriman)
16. Urnerboda-Kafi (Albert arr. Christopher Walter trs. Sandy Smith)
17. Mr. Music Man (Walter arr. Sandy Smith)
18. Brass Pearls of Switzerland (Trad arr. Sandy Smith)
19. Silbertraum (Walter arr. Sandy Smith)